Federal agriculture policy is a complex web of price controls and subsidies still operating under the framework erected by the New Dealers.
Rumors are swirling that Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) is under consideration to be secretary of agriculture in the incoming Trump administration. A committed libertarian such as Massie would be a good person to lead perhaps our most socialistic government department.
Trump’s first agriculture secretary, former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue, was a more status quo pick. Massie, or someone like him, would be a positive sign that Trump intends to keep his promise to shake up the federal bureaucracy and reduce the power that Washington, D.C., holds in American life.
As I wrote this spring, and as Whittaker Chambers wrote for National Review in 1958, the scale and scope of U.S. government involvement in agriculture is appalling. Chambers lived on a farm in his later years and was stunned at the government’s arrogance in telling him and his neighbors how they could farm their own land.
Federal agriculture policy is an endlessly complex web of price controls and subsidies still operating under the same basic framework erected by the New Dealers during the Great Depression. The farm bill is a bonanza of special-interest giveaways and waste that probably contributes to poorer health outcomes than would otherwise obtain.
Appointing an iconoclast such as Massie to lead USDA would be a welcome departure from Trump’s first term, when he increased subsidies and the farm bill continued its long-running expansion. And it could be a good test case of the new powers available to cut the administrative state post-Chevron.
While most developed economies have heavily governmentalized agriculture sectors, there is one exception that has set a better example: New Zealand. In the 1980s, as part of a larger liberalization wave, the Kiwis went full Milei and simply scrapped subsidies, price supports, and trade restrictions on agricultural products.
And, as I wrote in that article from spring, it has worked:
As of 2017, roughly the same number of people in New Zealand are employed in agriculture as before the reforms, and agriculture productivity has quadrupled. In a 2005 speech to the Cato Institute, Thomas Lambie, president of the Federated Farmers of New Zealand, said that after the reforms, farmers were in business “to serve the consumer, not the government.” This had the added knock-on effect of improving the environment, by encouraging farmers to farm the best crops for the land they own instead of the best crops for chasing subsidies.
Under Biden, the rest of the world has been following the U.S. in implementing more-invasive industrial policies to further subordinate economic production to government’s will — except Javier Milei in Argentina. It would be great to see a reversal of that trend under Trump — and to see the U.S. no longer leaving Milei stranded in his quest for shrinking government.
The biggest hindrance to appointing Massie secretary, though, will be other Republicans. Agriculture socialism is bipartisan, and many of the top agriculture states are represented by GOP senators. If Massie were to be confirmed, it would almost certainly be conditional on his promising to not go full Milei, even though that is what the USDA needs. Any major reforms would also face opposition from the interest groups that benefit from them and the bureaucrats who would be tasked with implementing them.
It’s just a rumor for now, and political realities are more likely than not to prevail. But there are few government departments more deserving of a full Milei treatment than the USDA.